“We are disappointed by the Interpol vote to admit the ‘State of Palestine’ as a full member state,” Anti-Defamation League Senior Vice President for International Affairs Sharon Nazarian said in a statement. “We believe this admission is premature.”

“Today’s vote must be seen as the latest step in the ongoing Palestinian campaign to seek international recognition as a state outside the context of bilateral negotiations with Israel,” she continued. “Issues such as statehood, borders, security and related mechanisms can only be resolved through direct negotiations, and the international community should refrain from rewarding Palestinian efforts to circumvent this process.”

“There is also legitimate concern expressed by Israel that the Palestinians could use their membership in Interpol to mount unwarranted legal challenges, including travel bans and extradition requests, against Israeli military and security officials,” Nazarian concluded.

Attorney Richard D. Heideman — the president of the American Zionist Movement — stated, “The Palestinians have clearly not met the standards set by Interpol in contributing to make the world a safer place, in fact the opposite remains true. The murderous terrorist attack in Har Adar yesterday, which has yet to be properly condemned by the Palestinian leadership, is just another example of the unconscionable conduct of the PA/PLO’s use of sanctioned violence through an ongoing campaign of hatred, incitement and the providing of financial incentivization and rewards by the Palestinian Authority.”

“Accepting the Palestinians as the newest member of Interpol under such circumstances is a travesty for justice,” he went on to say. “Interpol now has an absurd situation where member states will share sensitive information with Palestinian police, whose members have been accused of involvement in countless murders and heinous attacks throughout the years. This is a dark day in the fight against global terrorism.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brought up the Interpol issue during a meeting in Jerusalem on Wednesday with US President Donald Trump’s visiting international negotiations representative, Jason Greenblatt.

According to Netanyahu’s office, the prime minister told Greenblatt that “the actions of the Palestinian leadership in recent days severely impair the chances of achieving peace,” and vowed that “Palestinian diplomatic warfare would not go unanswered.”

Also on Wednesday, international law expert and former Israeli diplomat Alan Baker wrote that Interpol’s action was “indicative of the total insensitivity of the international community, which out of political correctness and an incomprehensible eagerness to coddle the Palestinian leadership, fails to realize that in so doing they are giving the Palestinians a green light and license to incite and to reward terror.”

(Wednesday, 27th September 2017) – Richard D. Heideman, Senior Counsel of Washington based law firm Heideman Nudelman & Kalik, which represents American victims of terrorism in cases filed in US Federal Courts against Libya, Syria, Iran, the PLO and banks accused of providing material support for terror, has slammed the decision by the International Police Organization (Interpol) to accept the Palestinians as a member. “The Palestinians have clearly not met the standards set by Interpol in contributing to make the world a safer place, in fact the opposite remains true,” Heideman said. “The murderous terrorist attack in Har Adar yesterday, which has yet to be properly condemned by the Palestinian leadership, is just another example of the unconscionable conduct of the PA/PLO’s use of sanctioned violence through an ongoing campaign of hatred, incitement and the providing of financial incentivization and rewards by the Palestinian Authority.”

“Accepting the Palestinians as the newest member of Interpol under such circumstances is a travesty for justice.”

Interpol members passed the Palestinian membership application by 75 to 24 votes, with 34 abstentions. The Palestinians needed more than two-thirds of the yes-or-no votes counted, and on the one-country one-vote basis passed that threshold easily.

“Interpol now has an absurd situation where member states will share sensitive information with Palestinian police, whose members have been accused of involvement in countless murders and heinous attacks throughout the years,” Heideman continued. “This is a dark day in the fight against global terrorism.”

Heideman Nudelman & Kalik, P.C. is proud to have served as counsel to the Estate of Liviu Librescu and his family in seeking justice arising from the tragic murder of Professor Librescu in the Virginia Tech massacre.

(Armin Rosen / Tablet) According to Iswhar Puri, the first thing you’d notice about Liviu Librescu was his posture. “He was ramrod straight” and had “a spine of steel,” said Puri, who is now the dean of the engineering faculty at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. At the time of his death, which occurred 10 years ago this Sunday, Librescu was a slight 76-year-old in declining physical health—but he never slouched, carrying himself with an assuredness that reflected deeper aspects of his character. Said Puri, “If you wanted an honest answer to something, if you wanted someone to say to you that you must be crazy…or if you wanted somebody to tell you in a straightforward way that you should do something or not do something, he was the man.”

On the morning of April 16, 2007, Puri was the head of the engineering science and mechanics department at Virginia Tech University, and Librescu, who had taught in Blacksburg since 1985, was one of his professors. Librescu was teaching a solid mechanics class in room 204 of the university’s Norris Hall when Sueng-Hui Cho, a 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior, began a rampage that claimed the lives of 32 people. The professor’s actions are familiar by now, but no easier to comprehend even a full decade later. According to eyewitnesses, at the sound of gunshots Librescu blocked the door of his classroom, which could not be locked from the inside. Cho eventually forced his way in and shot Librescu with a semi-automatic pistol—but by that point, 22 of his students had already climbed out a window and jumped to safety.

Liviu Librescu, date unknown. (Librescu family via Getty Images)

In a public Facebook post written last week, one of Librescu’s students recalls looking down from a second-story window ledge, and then stealing a final glimpse of Librescu standing alone, trying to secure the lecture hall door. As the post explains, that student’s future would include a master’s degree, a risky but inevitably satisfying career change, and a family of her own. At the time the post’s author last saw him, Librescu would have only a few moments to live.

Liviu Librescu was born in Ploisti, an industrial city in eastern Romania, in 1930. Like millions of other Jews across Europe, fascism and communism would shape the course of Librescu’s life, as it would for millions of other Jews across Europe.Romania’s newly formed right-wing government officially allied with the Nazis in 1940, and ordered the deportation of much the country’s Jewish population to the country’s eastern fringes the following year. The Nazis and their Romanian allies murdered an estimated 270,000 Romanian Jews during the Holocaust, out of a pre-war population of 728,000.

During the Holocaust, Librescu’s family was deported to the far eastern region of Transdniestria, then sent to the ghetto in the city of Foscani. Zvi Yaakov Zwiebel, the rabbi at Virginia Tech’s Chabad student center, which is now named in Librescu’s honor, says that the future professor’s experience in Foscani helped inspire him to become an aeronautical engineer. “He was always fascinated about how the birds flew in and out of the ghetto, and that’s what motivated him to get in the aerospace field,” said Zwiebel. “He loved this idea of freedom, whether it’s freedom of religion or freedom of intellect.”

Librescu earned an engineering Ph.D. in Romania after the war. As Puri explains, his research work delved into how the material composition of an aircraft affects its operational limits. Librescu studied how materials performed under flight stresses like heat and air friction, and his work was aimed at “making sure [those materials] don’t fail under very critical operating conditions,” Puri explained. Since Librescu was one of his country’s leading aerospace engineers, Romania’s communist regime conscripted him into several high-end military projects, including an effort to produce an indigenous fighter aircraft. Librescu warned that the plane was unflyable as designed, a fact proven during an early flight test. The program was scrapped soon after that.

The fighter plane episode, Librescu’s refusal to pledge fealty to the regime of Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, and his open desire to emigrate to Israel, all cost him dearly. He was fired from his position at Romania’s Academy of Sciences some time in the early 70s. Although he was banned from publishing in Romania, he succeeded in secretly trafficking an influential academic paper to a research journal in the Netherlands at immense personal risk, and would entrust visiting western European scientists with his latest research, which was unpublishable in his own country. In the late ’70s, the Israeli government interceded on Librescu’s behalf, and prime minister Menachem Begin, who also had painful first-hand experience of both fascism and communism, personally advocated for the scientist’s right to emigrate. He arrived in Israel, the country where he is now buried, in 1978, and taught at Tel Aviv University and the Technion in Haifa before moving on to Virginia Tech in 1985. He arrived for what was supposed to be a single sabbatical year, but ended up staying for much longer. (He’s now buried in Ra’anana.)

Simply existing as a Jew in 20th-century Eastern Europe had denied Librescu the freedom he’d sought for nearly his entire life. Of all places, he found what he was looking for in Blacksburg, a somewhat isolated university town four hours southwest of Washington, D.C. As Puri describes him, Librescu was a committed Jew, and also something of a luddite. His wife, Marlena, who died four years ago, handled nearly everything email or computer-related, and gradually became a working partner, an academic collaborator of sorts. “When you talked to them you lost sense of where one identity ended and one began,” Puri recalled.

Marlena Librescu is comforted by her son Joe during the funeral of Liviu Librescu in Ra’anana, Israel, April 20, 2007. (David Silverman/Getty Images)

Librescu developed a reputation as an almost obsessively prolific participant in academic conferences, perhaps a result of being cut off from the scientific community for so much of his career (at the time of his death, Librescu was preparing papers for three conferences he planned on attending over the summer of 2007). He had close friendships in Blacksburg. Pier Marzocca, a former Virginia Tech professor who is now associate dean of the school of engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, described Librescu as “a father figure” in an email. Marzocca wrote that he ate with Librescu nearly every Sunday night for four years. Librescu frequently shared anecdotes of his time back in Europe, something his colleagues seemed to welcome: After all, the Romanian had seen more of the world and its possibilities than any of them had seen, or probably wanted to. “Although now 10 years later those memories are somewhat blending in, some of these conversations are very vivid and his way of living is very much inspirational to me,” Marzocca said.

In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Librescu’s actions—for which he was posthumously awarded Romania’s highest civilian honor—were a much needed source of hope and resilience for a shattered Virginia Tech community. Rabbi Zwiebel arrived in Blacksburg two years after the shooting, a time when memories of the April 16th massacre were still raw. Zwiebel has drawn on Librescu’s example in his own work on campus over the years. “We try to teach this selfless legacy to the students, and that’s what Torah’s about,” Zwiebel said. “Sometimes things are bigger than us.”

Part of Zwiebel’s responsibilities include helping to commemorate the massacre and Librescu’s heroism. On April 24, the 28th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar—which is both Yom HaShoah and the 10th Hebrew anniversary of Librescu’s death—the Virginia Tech Chabad house is organizing a memorial event in which a Holocaust survivor and one of Librescu’s two sons will speak. “You try to take a Jewish perspective of what we can learn out of it, and how we can grow out of it,” Zwiebel said of the 2007 shooting.

Ten years later, perhaps Librescu’s greatest legacy is that he gave nearly two-dozen people a chance to continue their lives. Even after a decade of thinking over his friend and colleague’s decision to barricade his classroom door, Puri is still in awe of Librescu’s contribution to the world—something which, as Puri notes, is almost impossible to really measure. “I don’t think that you’re saving the person momentarily. You’re saving a life. You’re saving 22 lives. Those 22 lives then go on to contribute to society. They multiply. Those 22 lives go on into other generations. I mean that’s what’s mind-blowing about what Liviu did. It’s quite possible that some of the students who were students 10 years ago have kids today. It’s because of one man, right?”

In March 2017, Richard D. Heideman gave the keynote address at the fourth annual Louis D. Brandeis Center National Law Student Leadership Conference in Washington, D.C. The conference brought together law student leaders from 13 of LDB’s law student chapters across the country, and educated these students on topics including civil rights law; international law and the Arab-Israeli Conflict; legal responses to terror and how to pursue them; religious liberty; and how to use legal tools to combat anti-Semitism and the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Additionally, the students were presented with networking opportunities amongst their peers, attorneys, and legal scholars.

Heideman’s address entitled “Holding Sponsors of Terrorism Legally Accountable” was a powerful declaration of the power of an individual lawyer to change the world. Heideman discussed overcoming insurmountable odds to bring cases against world leaders, foreign powers, and figures considered generally untouchable in the legal community. Heideman represented clients against Muammar Gaddafi, as well as the nations of Libya and Syria. Heideman sought justice for the victims of the Abu Nidal terrorist organization attacks on the Vienna and Rome airports, along with the American victims of the EgyptAir flight 648 hijacking. Heideman chronicled the difficult road his law firm faced in obtaining justice and compensation for victims of crimes that were perpetrated decades earlier, crimes for which no one believed justice could be obtained. Heideman spoke about the importance of anti-terrorism law, of having a White House committed to the fight against terror, and his theory of confluence: when the victims, lawyers, congressmen, hearings, an amenable White House, and the State Department all come together, anything can be accomplished. Richard Heideman ended his discussion with a piece of advice for all of the aspiring lawyers in the room “Stand up, speak out, and seek justice.

Law360, New York (November 3, 2016, 10:09 PM EDT) — A Utah federal judge on Thursday gave the final nod to a settlement between Garmin Ltd. and a class of consumers alleging that a model of its sports watches is defective and comes apart during use, including $385,000 in attorneys’ fees.

Under the terms of the deal, class members can who bought a Garmin Forerunner 610 between April 2011 and July 2014 can have the watch or the watchband repaired for free or replaced; those who have already paid to fix their watch can receive $50 to $75 back under the terms of the settlement. U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby said that the settlement provides “significant value, both monetary and non-monetary” to the classes.

“The court hereby grants final approval of the settlement on the basis that the settlement is fair, reasonable and adequate to the settlement classes,” the judge said.

In addition to the attorneys’ fees, the judge also approved incentive awards of $1,250 each to class representatives Andrea and Joel Katz.

“We are pleased that the Court has recognized the fairness and value that this settlement has brought to consumers of the Forerunner 610 nationwide,” Noel J. Nudelman of Heideman Nudelman & Kalik PC told Law360 on Thursday. “The settlement not only provides class members with meaningful financial compensation but also provides an additional extended warranty to all class members.”

The Katzes filed suit in March 2014, claiming that that the watches are defective because the wristband separates from the watch while the user is running or participating in other physical activities, according to the complaint.

“The plastic watchband has an unacceptable rate of failure in that it detaches from the Forerunner 610, resulting in the loss or damage of the watch or the need for the consumer to spend his/her time and money to replace or fix the plastic watchband,” the complaint said.

Andrea Katz bought a Forerunner 610 watch for $350 as a gift for her husband because of its ability to track distances, navigate routes and monitor a variety of weather conditions, the complaint said.

Garmin’s marketing materials tout the “suitability of the Forerunner 610 in a variety of intense physical activities, including its ability to conduct ‘interval training,’ analyze bicycling and running routes, and measure aerobic fitness,” the complaint said.

When her husband used the watch while running, however, the plastic wristband detached from the watch as a result of the metal pins falling out or breaking, the complaint said. He brought the watch into the Garmin store to be repaired, but the same thing happened again three months later.

The third time the watch came apart, the Garmin salesperson recommended he buy a more resilient Velcro band at his own expense.

Garmin knew or should have known about the defects in the design and manufacturing of the watch, the complaint said. Despite its knowledge, Garmin refused to recall the Forerunner 610 or replace the plastic wristbands for free.

According to the complaint, there are tens of thousands of potential class members who bought the watches. On Amazon.com, there are more than 300 reviews and nearly 10 percent of those report the same problems, the complaint said.

The Lawfare Project has recruited dozens of international attorneys representing major firms and organizations to sign a letter to Tokyo Sexwale, Chairman of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) Monitoring Committee for Israel and Palestine, informing him of flagrant and continuous violations of the FIFA statutes and codes by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA). The letter follows the complaint submitted by the PFA demanding that Israeli football clubs in disputed territories be kicked out of the institution. We are grateful to Jonathan Turner of UKLFI for helping us draft the letter.

The best defense is always a good offense. We therefore strongly urge the Israeli Football Association (IFA) to file claims with FIFA regarding the PFA’s behavior, which is so reprehensible that it warrants a suspension or expulsion of the PFA from the institution. FIFA must protect itself from politicization, and therefore it cannot address claims made against the Israeli team without simultaneously addressing claims against the Palestinians. The PFA, whose behavior is totally antithetical to the spirit and purpose of international sport, must be made aware that their frivolous complaints against the IFA render them equally vulnerable to investigation.

Disgraceful PFA violations of the FIFA statutes and ethical codes include:
The PFA punishing Palestinians who participate in football games with Israelis, in contravention of Article 5(1) of the FIFA Statute, which provides that “FIFA shall promote friendly relations between and among member associations and in society for humanitarian objectives.” This behavior also violates the prohibition of discrimination of any kind in Article 4 of the FIFA Statute and Article 23 of the FIFA Code of Ethics.

Officials of the PFA regularly denigrating Israel and Israelis, in breach of Article 23 of the FIFA Code of Ethics, which prohibits persons bound by the Code (including officials) from offending the dignity of a country or group of people through derogatory words or actions.
The promotion and glorification of terrorism inherent in Palestinian football clubs’ celebrations of terrorists who have killed Israelis; by naming their teams after dead Palestinian terrorists; and by praising acts of terrorism against Israelis. This behavior violates the physical and mental integrity of Palestinians in contravention of Article 24 of the FIFA Code of Ethics, by encouraging impressionable children to end their lives in suicide-homicide attacks and to emulate those terrorists being praised by their heroes, Palestinian athletes and football clubs.
The use of the platform given to the PFA and its leadership to promote a political agenda and politicize FIFA and international sport, generally. This conduct breaches Article 14 of the FIFA Code of Ethics, which requires political neutrality.

If FIFA officials plan to take action against the Israeli clubs in disputed territories, they must also be prepared to acknowledge and punish the Palestinian Football Association for these brazen violations of FIFA codes. FIFA must protect itself and all institutions of international sport from being politicized and dishonored in Palestinian attempts to ostracize the Jewish state.

THE NEXT JASTA? The recent success of the bill letting 9/11 victims’ families sue SaudiArabia, passed over PresidentBarackObama‘s veto, is emboldening other terrorism victims to seek similar openings. Lawyers for EstherKlieman, an American who was killed in a 2002 attack on a public bus in Jerusalem, have fought in court for more than a decade for restitution from the PalestinianAuthority. But that case and others like it have lost on jurisdictional grounds. Now the attorneys for Klieman’s estate — Richard Heideman, Noel Nudelman, Tracy Kalik and Keyauna Fogle of Heideman Nudelman & Kalik — are lobbying for new legislation to help the lawsuits proceed.

While the Saudi bill, known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, applies to foreign states responsible for attacks within the U.S., this law would address non-governmental entities responsible for deaths of Americans abroad, Heideman told PI. Lawmakers could decide to write it generally or specifically on the Palestinians, he said. The lawyers say they’ll start outreach to every member of Congress in the lame duck or next Congress.

“We believe it’s an issue that ought to be one of the first steps the next Congress takes,” he said.

MEANWHILE, talk of retaliatory laws that anti-JASTA lobbyists warned about are starting to bubble up overseas. A pressure group called the Arab Project in Iraq asked the country’s parliament to prepare a lawsuit against the U.S. over the 2003 invasion. Victims of this summer’s failed Turkish coup are discussing whether a similar bill could let them sue the U.S., which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses of harboring the cleric he deems responsible.

LAME DUCK: Confirming Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, providing relief to Flint, Mich., in the water resources bill, and fixing JASTA have a “strong chance” of getting done in the lame duck, according to the latest slide deck from BruceMehlman of Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas. The only must-dos for those 16 legislative days are government funding, the National Defense Authorization Act and leadership elections, he said. Possible, but less likely: the Trans-Pacific Partnership, health research, sentencing reform, orphaned tax extenders.

— Dorothy Savarese, chairman, CEO, and president of Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank, is the American Bankers Association‘s next chairman, writesThe Hill’s Sylvan Lane.

— MarcCadin was named as chief operating officer and ChrisMorton was named SVP government affairs at the Association for Advanced Life Underwriting.

— The Healthcare Distribution Alliance hired Matthew DiLoreto as vice president of state government affairs from the NationalCommunityPharmacistsAssociation and LeahLindahl as senior director of Western state government affairs from the ColoradoBioScienceAssociation.

— LucyGettman was promoted to chief advocacy officer leading the federal advocacy & public policy team at the National School Boards Association.

OBAMACARE’S NEXT CHAPTER: Rick Pollack of the American Hospital Association, Marilyn Tavenner of America’s Health Insurance Plans, and Steve Ubl of Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America agreed that they won’t support a Clinton administration push for a public option without fixes to the Obamacare marketplace, reportsThe Hill’s Peter Sullivan.

HOUSE IN PLAY: More than a dozen Democratic challengers are benefiting from a legal loophole to get extra dollars from the DCCC, reportsPOLITICO’s Scott Bland. They’re wording TV spots in such a way so that they can split the cost of their ads with the party. “If you can find a way now that you only have to pay 50 percent of an ad, and link your opponent to Trump, and that makes strategic sense in the district, that’s a no-brainer,” said a Democratic operative.

SPECTRUM: POLITICO’s Margaret Harding McGill and Tony Romm report who’s under consideration to lead the FCC if Clinton wins: major fundraiser Susan Ness; Nielsen executive Karen Kornbluh; Phil Verveer, senior counselor to Chairman Tom Wheeler; Alec Ross, former digital adviser to Hillary Clinton at the State Department; Daniel Sepulveda, an ambassador who’s leading efforts at State on internet freedom issues; Blair Levin, a former FCC official and architect of the National Broadband Plan; Catherine Sandoval, commissioner on the California Public Utilities Commission; and Phil Weiser, University of Colorado law professor who advised the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama.

COLONIALS: Former Texas state senator WendyDavis headlines a stop at George Washington University today on a gun violence prevention bus tour by Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group led by former Congresswoman GabrielleGiffords and astronaut MarkKelly. The SmootTewesGroup is running media for the tour.

Richard D. Heideman, Noel J. Nudelman and Tracy Reichman Kalik of Heideman Nudelman & Kalik, PC Receive Trial Lawyer of the Year Award by Public Justice for their Work Against the Arab Bank Plc.

Richard D. Heideman, as senior counsel of Heideman Nudelman & Kalik, PC, and Noel Nudelman and Tracy R. Kalik are counsel for over one hundred and fifty American plaintiffs against Arab Bank Plc for the facilitation of acts of international terrorism and provision of material support to various terrorist groups involved in the Second Intifada in violation of the Anti-Terrorism Act (“ATA”), which resulted in the death and injury to American nationals.

The Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 1992 allows people who were injured by acts of terror abroad to bring civil suits in federal court. Litle was a mass tort consolidation case with 117 plaintiffs who were injured in suicide bombings and attacks in Israel, 40 wrongful death cases, along with 440 family members of those injured or killed. The plaintiffs claimed that Arab Bank knowingly provided financial support to terrorist leaders and the families of terrorist operatives, including suicide bombers. This case marks the first time that a financial institution has been brought to trial – and held liable –under the ATA.

The plaintiffs argued that Arab Bank administered a Saudi-funded universal insurance plan for the benefit of Palestinian terrorists killed, injured, or apprehended by Israeli security forces. For years, branches of the Saudi charity authorized payments ranging from $140 to $5,316 to terrorists and their families. The plaintiffs also argued that Arab Bank should be held liable for every terrorist act committed since the beginning of the Al Aqsa Intifada, a period of escalated Israeli-Palestinian conflict that began in 2000, because the charity provided its clients with financial benefits regardless of whether they were affiliated with terrorist groups.

The parties reached a confidential settlement agreement in August of 2015. The lawsuits were aimed at curtailing the flow of money to terrorist organizations by extending the legal liability beyond terrorists themselves to the financial institutions that aid their actions. The outcome of this trial will undoubtedly encourage stronger consequences for corporations that promote terrorism and violate human rights.